Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers, meaning: originators and developers of content who also deliver and display the content. Traditionally, publishing has often been done from the top of a mountain—publishers would tell the public what they needed to know and the citizenry would just listen and absorb the information without much input. Today, much of the news has become a conversation, and publishers are required to listen to the community as they simultaneously broadcast to them. The voices in the community have always been there, but have been often lost at neighborhood meetings, forums, or just to a politically heated conversation at the dinner table.
Now, many of these conversations are taking place online, and publishers more than ever need to think from the beginning about what conversations need to take place as well as what platforms, online or otherwise, foster those conversations. A problem currently exists as publishing, as a participatory process, has not been available to the public at large. In the future, online publishing will manage and amplify the conversations the community is having, because the conversations will happen with or without popular access to traditional forms of publishing.
A source attribution system having a tracking module to generate an identification meta-data to be associated with an original content of a first publisher that originates in a third-party source server of a public wide area network will prove useful for all types of publishers. The original content created by an original publisher will be attributable to them through the identification meta-data associated with the original content when the original content having the associated identification meta-data is republished (by another publisher).
Currently, the challenge with the social stream as a means for news consumption is that it lacks context. A new approach to social media publishing must be able to enable a community to share stories that are attached to a time and a place and may showcase information on a timeline that intersects with people's stories. Publishers also need to have social content creation integrated into their workflow, whether that means creating content for specific platforms, or using the content from a particular platform for the purpose of curation. The challenge will lie in giving writers and producers specific tools they can use to pull disparate elements into stories from Facebook®, Twitter®, YouTube® etc.
Dramatic technological changes will open opportunities for online publishing to let anybody armed with a laptop and an internet connection to connect with the public (across the world) on an unprecedented level. While traditional publishing may still propound facts and supply the general public with the news, the rise of social media may change how a story is told and consumed. However, there is a lack of a platform for social media interaction-based publishing that is collaborative and at the same time naturally responsive to real time events and news. In addition, there is a need for a new tool that allows publishers to get instant feedback, gather meaningful tips, track trends and build valuable relationships with the public so increase the viability and profitability of online publishing.
Furthermore, although news organizations and online publishers have embraced social media, they have largely done so as a distribution channel, focusing on Facebook® and Twitter® because of the referral traffic that the platforms may provide to their sites. But as news and online publication outlets realize the value is not only measured in clicks, but in an engaged and participating audience, they will look to take advantage of other platforms, and perhaps more importantly, other online communities. Though many news organizations and publishing houses would like to engage readers across many social platforms, the missing link is often justifying such resources that are not always easy to monetize. It may be acceptable to deliver the news and original online content in a way that is targeted to social platforms, but what is currently lacking is a method to monetize news and original online content delivery using social platforms for more than just driving traffic back to news sites. What is lacking is a method to create real value—monetary and non-monetary, from online publishing.